Ángel Gaitan, the controversial youtuber and a regular in Iker Jiménez’s media universe, has accused, without evidence, the NGO Cáritas of trying to keep the material that it had transported to Valencia to help the victims of DANA. The statement extends to the town councils of the towns it has come to help. “I don’t cry because you have to be strong, but the only thing I have right now is the desire to cry,” he says in one of his Tik Tok videos. Since this Wednesday afternoon it has been impossible to locate him to offer his point of view.
“The city council comes in and wants to keep everything. Caritas enters and wants to keep everything. And I have promised, even if it costs me my health, that I am going to have a heart attack, that this is not going to happen. They only ask what the most valuable things are, what machinery there is, what generators, what batteries, what expensive equipment… they are only interested in that,” he says.
He also stated that he had received threats from an undetermined council – which prevents the information from being verified – to send them the GRS. [Grupo de Reserva y Seguridad de la Guardia Civil] or to the GEOs to stop their convoy.
“Things are very screwed up, people are doing business here,” he concludes without providing the slightest evidence. He closed his speech by adding that “everything is controlled by four, remember what I tell you, they are going to get rich from this tragedy.” He tiktokerjust yesterday, insisted that help was not arriving “and that there was absolutely no one”, a totally false statement.
Given these statements, the director of Cáritas Valencia Aurora Molina pointed out that “everyone knows us, knows what we do and what we have been dedicated to for many years. We have presence and structure in the almost forty affected towns, and we have nearly a thousand volunteers, in addition to all the resources we need to carry out our work. We don’t even need to pick up the phone if we need something, there are many companies, individuals, administrations… that offer us everything we need.”
Molina also clarifies that “we have a type of activities that we have been carrying out for years in those places and that, when the lights are gone, we will continue doing them. Each organization has its tasks and we have ours. We neither remove cars, nor fix power lines… Our mission is to provide direct support to people who need it, which changes at every moment; “We have the means to do it, and we know the most effective way to achieve our objectives.”
How to gain followers with those affected
It is not the first controversy surrounding the tiktokerowner of the GT Automoción workshop in Aranjuez and judicial expert, who has been uploading videos to various social networks since DANA began, in which he says that he has managed to collect donations worth 1.2 million euros. Another of his actions, to gain followers among the victims of the tragedy, was to organize a competition between different affected towns: the one who most likes gave his publication, he would receive help. Later, he apologized in a video in which he blamed the press for misunderstanding him and rudely modified his story from the previous day, and insisted on the story that they tried to seize the material. Of all the organizations and individuals in the area, yours is the only one that says it has suffered this threat.
Given the success, he says, he has stopped raising funds due to the fiscal and management problems that entails. It is impossible to know if the amounts he is considering are true, but it cannot be denied that it is true that he has brought help to several of the towns in the so-called Ground Zero. In another of the videos he addresses “comrade Pedro Sánchez” to criticize his management – although the authority lies with the Generalitat Valenciana –, explain to him what needs to be done and urges him to bring “the entire army” and evacuate the entire affected area and shelter those affected in hotels throughout Spain. “Don’t take this message as a joke, take it seriously,” he recommends.
Gaitán, who became famous for his videos about the world of his motor and who has more than 3.6 million subscribers. He appeared last November 3 on the program Horizonwhich features Iker Jiménez, brandishing a Spanish flag. While showing it to the camera, he assured that “I am a façade. Tomorrow, please, put this video everywhere (…). I have found out that being a facha is something similar to what I thought it was like to be normal: being Spanish, loving your country, working, doing things for your country.”
At his side were the Covid denier Beatriz Talegón and the controversial Colonel Pedro Baños, who suggested that the attack on Pedro Sánchez’s car was a setup. It is the same program in which they claimed that there were 700 deaths in the Bonaire park, as they had been able to confirm. However, the premises’ guards acted according to protocol and prevented access to the lower floors.
Online scams and slander against NGOs
While Gaitán claims to have raised more than one million euros in aid—a fact that is impossible to verify—anonymous initiatives or initiatives with accounts of undetermined origin have appeared on several social networks to obtain donations to allocate to the victims. Although there is nothing to indicate the relationship between the youtuber and these actions, the truth is that some users recommend trusting it. A gofundme has even been created to raise 10,000 euros, although yesterday it had not raised a single one.
One of those accounts stated: “Let the word spread, Caritas and the Red Cross are responsible for the fact that supplies are not reaching the residents of Valencia. “Do not donate anything to these organizations and look for other means so that things can reach the neighbors.” Messages against these and other NGOs are constant in far-right networks—they are accused of prioritizing immigrants when providing aid—and contribute to the story of the authorities’ inability to deal with the consequences of DANA.
User comments include absurdities such as that of elxute, who states that “The company where I work (Mayoral) donated €25,000 to Cáritas and another €25,000 to the Red Cross, in addition to offering them clothing and necessary items, they refused to accept them and They told him that they only took the $ $ $.” Another user, whose nick is Estefi, assures that she has been “living next to a Red Cross all her life. They went to pick up food with cars valued at more than $100,000 (…) while they gave nothing to those who truly needed it.” The most common accusation is to describe this and other NGOs as a “mafia.”
The Red Cross refutes the hoax
Contrary to what Guaitán claims – who shows his face – and others who hide behind nicknames as picturesque as 123456780wyfidj, help is reaching all affected populations. There is no shortage of water or food, although there is still a lot of work to do and not all towns have received logistical aid at the same time, or with the same intensity. It is so undeniable that there are all kinds of logistical problems that the affected towns are better off today than they were a few days ago.
From the Red Cross, Iñigo Vila (the entity’s emergency manager) explains that it is false that entities like his ‘require’ the material provided, individually, by individuals. In fact, they neither ask for it nor accept it. “We only accept donations from large companies that contact us, and here we evaluate whether what they offer is useful to us. Another issue is that, many times, the problem is not whether there is material to deliver but how to do it: the consequences of DANA sometimes make it difficult to reach certain places.”
A problem with selfless donations from individuals is that they do not always adapt to the needs or ways of acting of this type of entities. “We cannot give some things to one and others to others, depending on what comes in. You have to give everyone the same, which means classifying, organizing… If a company offers several thousand pre-cooked meals, it is collected, but we cannot take care of hundreds or thousands of small donations.”
Another point that clarifies is related to financial donations. “They provide a lot of flexibility since needs change over time and, especially in tragedies like this, we are talking about very long deadlines. In the Canary Islands we continue to offer help to the victims of the volcano and to be able to maintain the help over time and adapt it to each moment, money is necessary.”
His words coincide with the statement issued yesterday by the Federation of Food Banks (Fesbal) to avoid a logistical collapse since the warehouses are full.
Finally, the Red Cross recalls that its activity—like that of other similar entities—“is subject to audits, with all aid planned, reports to donors… and everything is framed in long-term plans.”
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